A bid to overturn the acquittal of outgoing Premier Silvio Berlusconi on judge-bribery charges failed on Thursday after a Milan appeals court rejected a request by prosecutors for a retrial.
The court threw out the request under a law recently passed by Berlusconi's outgoing government which prevents appeals in the case of defendants acquitted at the end of a first trial.
Prior to the reform, Italy's three-tier justice system meant that verdicts including acquittals could automatically be appealed twice before becoming definitive. Berlusconi, a billionaire media magnate who was the first serving Italian premier to be tried in a criminal court, was cleared in December 2004 in the so-called SME trial.
Prosecutors had been seeking his conviction on charges that he bribed judges to prevent food conglomerate SME being sold to business rival Carlo De Benedetti in the mid-1980s. Berlusconi was cleared on one count but on another, that of paying a $430,000 bribe to a Rome judge in 1991, the judges applied the statute of limitations, saying the alleged offence happened too long ago for charges to be pressed.
The prosecution immediately appealed the acquittal while Berlusconi's defence team lodged an appeal in order to seek full clearance on the second count as well. The Milan court rejected both requests on Thursday together with a prosecution objection questioning the constitutionality of the Berlusconi government's appeals system reform law.
The law was passed a second time in February having been initially rejected by President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi because of constitutional breaches. The Italian president can only send laws back to parliament once. If they are approved a second time, he must sign them.
Under the reform, prosecutors no longer have the appeals court stage to contest a verdict and must go directly to the nation's supreme court, the Court of Cassation, which normally examines appeals only on technical grounds. The law was presented by Gaetano Pecorella, the head of the House Justice Committee and one of Berlusconi's lawyers.
Berlusconi denied opposition allegations that the law was self-serving. His coalition defended the legislation on the grounds that it would benefit all acquitted defendants, speed up the trial system and reduce the risk of innocent people being unjustly convicted.
Prosecutors in the original SME trial sought an eight-year conviction for Berlusconi. The 69-year-old centre-right leader has always denied wrong-doing, insisting he is the victim of a politically motivated judicial witch-hunt.
In November 2003, Berlusconi's former attorney and one-time defence minister, MP Cesare Previti, was sentenced to five years in the same SME trial. An appeals court upheld the conviction last December and Previti is now awaiting a definitive verdict from the supreme court.
The judges found Previti guilty of paying co-defendant Renato Squillante, the former chief Rome magistrate in charge of preliminary investigations, a bribe of $434,000 in 1991. The prosecution provided the court with evidence that the money was transferred to Previti from an account belonging to Berlusconi's family holding company Fininvest. Judges said Squillante had received "regular payments" from Previti and another co-defendant, Rome attorney Attilio Pacifico.
In April 2003, Previti was sentenced to 11 years in a related bribery trial on charges which involved, among other things, the Berlusconi group's battle with De Benedetti for the Mondadori publishing group in 1989-91. In May 2005, an appeals court confirmed the conviction but reduced Previti's sentence from 11 to seven years. A supreme court verdict in the case is now imminent.
Berlusconi, who is Italy's richest man, has been at the centre of numerous corruption investigations into his vast business empire. He insists all the probes against him have been mounted by left-wing prosecutors whom he says are out to topple him.
He has never received a definitive guilty verdict but in some cases he has been cleared because of the statute of limitations or changes to the law introduced by his own government. Berlusconi is currently waiting to hear whether he must stand trial in a high-profile corruption case also involving British corporate lawyer David Mills, the husband of Britain's Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell.
The premier, who came to power in May 2001, was defeated by centre-left leader Romano Prodi in Italy's general election earlier this month.
